The Savoury Crops
by That Endless Mania
Summary: Restaurant AU. Lots of glorious, unadulterated crack. In which Eren Yaeger the waiter attempts to not punch every customer in sight, Mikasa sighs a lot, Levi the talented Sous-Chef has an insatiable desire to polish every square inch of the restaurant, Armin has a pet fish named Bubbles... you get the idea. Pairings are dynamic and requests are entirely welcome.


A warning: I wrote everything in an hour right after coming back from a three day camp during which I slept a grand total of five hours, so the quality speaks for itself. This is very obviously a multi-chaptered fic, although I really cannot guarantee that the whole theme and tone of the fic will pick itself up during the later chapters. As I mentioned in the summary, none of these pairings are even remotely fixed; we roll well with anything, really. Requests are very welcome, the odder the better (eg. Hanji, Sasha, spandex), I'll try my best to work them into the fic. Also do tell me if you spot any mistakes; I'm quite sure there will be plentiful.

I'm done with the rambling! I truly hope that you will enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it, that is to say, a lot :-)

* * *

**Chapter 1: Steak, Kidney and Prostate Pie **

* * *

Eren Yaeger stomped into the humble one room flat he shared with his foster sister Mikasa and his best friend Armin, slamming the door behind him.

'Fuck the whole lot!' he screamed as he dramatically slammed his fist into the first object that came into sight, which unfortunately happened to be Armin's beloved fish tank that housed his beloved pet fish, Bubbles. There was a loud and painful sound of shattering glass before a goldfish, shards of glass and two litres of water cascaded onto the floor.

'Eren,' sighed Mikasa as she continued to peel potatoes in front of the kitchen sink. 'Armin will be sad.'

'Fuck that! Fuck Bobbles!' Eren cried.

'Bubbles,' Mikasa corrected somewhat unhelpfully.

Eren's gaze fell onto his bloodied hands and he started cursing again.

'So,' Mikasa said as she tried grabbing hold of the goldfish flopping frantically on the floor. 'I take it that you won't be returning to Taco Gongs anymore?'

Upon hearing the name of his previous place of employment Eren's face turned an impressive shade of magenta. 'Fucker - clearly said he wanted the spicy chicken - changing his order halfway and blaming it on me - wanted me to pay - like fuck I would - asshole -'

'Eren,' Mikasa decided to cut short his impassioned soliloquy. 'Did you punch your customer again?'

'Fucking piece of shit - he called me-'

'Eren! Did you or did you not!'

'No, I didn't,' he snapped, half triumphantly.

Mikasa narrowed her eyes. 'Oh god… did you kick him?'

'...'

'Eren!'

'He was asking for it-'

Mikasa sighed. At least he'd gotten rid of his biting habits. 'Eren, what was our previous agreement?'

'Like hell I'm going to work at your seedy little restaurant!'

Mikasa sighed again. At the rate she was exhaling air she could easily be replacing a tyre pump in a bicycle shop. 'Eren, you promised you would come work with me if you got fired again. I'm the only one who can keep you from attempting manslaughter every thirty seconds.'

'I didn't get fired! I walked out of the damn place! By myself!' Eren seethed. Mikasa was right, but he wasn't going to give her that satisfaction. 'Anyway, I refuse to go to your sad excuse of a restaurant. The place is so run down it looks like it will start hailing bricks any time.'

Mikasa snorted. 'Says the boy whose house currently resembles a toxic wasteland of death and decay. Really, Eren, I don't understand why you're so averse to working in Savoury Crops.'

'Even the name is retarded! What the fuck does Savoury Crops even mean?!'

There was a brief moment of silence. Eren opened his mouth in preparation for another round of retorts when he noticed the Glint in Mikasa's eyes. Eren gulped. Glint!Mikasa always gave him a run for his money.

'Eren, do you know how much money we are pumping into Armin's hospital fees now?'

'Well I-'

'Do you know that unless I land both of us in proper jobs soon we will be drinking ditch water and eating grass by the roadside?'

'That's-'

'Do you know how hard I'm working to support two people and a sick invalid because someone can't last more than three hours into his new job?'

Eren's shoulder slumped in defeat. Mikasa graced him with another glowering look before pulling out a set of crisp new Savoury Crops uniform and thrusting it in his face. 'Here, put it on. I already told them that my foster brother would be reporting to work today.'

'Your faith in me is astounding,' Eren grumbled as he tried on his new uniform.

'Eren, in the past five jobs you actually managed to land yourself into - god knows how - you have punched your customers four times, slapped them two times, kicked them one time, and taken your anger out on the stove, my favourite begonia plant, Armin's pet fish, the kettle, the ceiling fan and also punched enough walls to make our house, I repeat a certain someone, hail bricks any moment. Oh, and then there was this whole biting habit going on. I'm surprised you still have teeth left,' Mikasa recited. 'Shall I continue?'

And that was that.

* * *

The Savoury Crops was located in an old rundown building smack right in the middle of the rowdiest and most dubious place in town, Maria Street. Consequently any attempt at creating any semblance of an ambience had been deemed ironic in the context and therefore dismissed; the humble eatery sported mostly foldable plastic chairs, creaky wooden tables and truly ugly cacti print curtains.

Eren was therefore in for a huge shock when he stepped into the semi-restaurant. For a rundown eatery, the interior was surprisingly clean. In fact, it was so clean that it looked almost dubious.

'Are you sure this isn't secretly a hideout harvesting illegal human organs?' Eren whispered nervously to Mikasa, who merely laughed.

'That would be the work of Levi,'' she whispered back. As if on cue, a short pretty looking man marched out of the storeroom carrying a mop, a bucket, a huge bottle of floor detergent and a look of absolute determination that would send every last bit of dirt running for the hills.

'Levi!' Mikasa strode over. 'This is my brother, Eren. Eren, meet our Sous-Chef, Levi.'

'Another brat,' Levi remarked, with the most provoking mixture of condescension and indifference. Eren bristled, but upon the thought of chomping on grass by the roadside and Armin dying in the hospital, refrained from replying with anything but a low and vaguely hostile 'grrr'.

'The lunch crowd is gone,' Levi continued tonelessly as he poured enough detergent into the bucket to clean up not only the restaurant but also a turkey slaughterhouse on the eve of thanksgiving. 'I don't expect anymore customers for the time being. Make yourselves useful and help me with cleaning up.'

'The restaurant's awfully empty, though,' Mikasa commented as she rummaged for spare cleaning equipment. 'Isn't Hanji and the rest supposed to be working today, too?'

'Hanji is in the kitchen. She's trying out new recipes at the moment and I don't really want to be there,' Levi replied. The disgusted and perturbed expression that accompanied the statement did not go unnoticed by anyone. 'Jean is out replacing our groceries because Sasha ate her way through an entire sack of potatoes.'

'Oh… Where's Sasha?'

Following Mikasa's question a loud banging sound emanated from the cupboard behind Eren, coupled with muffled, aggrieved shouts for help.

'I think she went home,' replied Levi with an expression that clearly threatened a most violent, painful and bloody death to anybody who dared to think otherwise.

There was a long and painful silence, punctuated by noises from the cupboard that vaguely reminded Eren of a hippopotamus getting sawed into two. Mikasa decided to break the semi-silence by turning to Eren and asking him in an overly cheerful tone if he would like to help out with cleaning the utensils, to which he agreed with an equally artificial level of enthusiasm.

It appeared that the Mikasa would not be the only person in the restaurant capable of keeping Eren in control after all.

* * *

Eren spent the rest of the afternoon washing and drying utensils and attempting to memorise the menu, which looked like it had been pieced together by a three year old toddler with both developmental deficits and severe dyslexia.

'What in the world is a "cucucucuber and tommytoe salad"?' Eren wondered aloud as he tried valiantly to discern the terrible handwriting.

'Don't be an obnoxious dick, Eren, I'm sure you know what it means. Anyway, the original set of menu got burned into cinders during a… scuffle… in the kitchen,' Mikasa explained vaguely. 'So we got one of our waiters, Connie, to help write down a temporary set of menus. They don't get much education where he came from, so he can't really write very well; we're going to rewrite everything once we have the time.'

'And the dishes don't really have any theme to them. And they sound kinda weird,' Eren continued, jabbing his fingers at the 'appletieser' section. 'The steak, kidney and… prostate... pie is right next to the guacamole banana ramen.'

'Most of the dishes here are thought up by Hanji,' Mikasa replied. 'They sound really weird but trust me they are good. She's the other Sous-Chef here. She's incredible when it comes to cooking up weird combinations, but she fails abjectly at cooking the actual food. Levi does that. No one knows who's really responsible for the taste of the food, though. Hanji comes up with these out of the world dishes and they are so good, but everything Levi makes tastes incredible.'

Eren opened his mouth to question the legitimacy of a steak, kidney and prostate pie but his question was cut short by an obnoxious looking man sauntering into the restaurant holding a sack of potatoes.

'I'm back,' he declared to Mikasa, eyeing her in a way that made Eren want to punch something, preferably the man's horse-like face. Horseface then turned to Eren and addressed him in a much more hostile tone. 'Who are you?'

'He's Eren, my foster brother,' Mikasa explained. 'Eren, meet Jen. Jean, Eren.'

'Hello,' Jean greeted Eren coolly, clearly attempting to keep his voice as low and masculine as possible but tragically sounding like someone with a bad case of tonsillitis.

'Hi,' Eren replied with an equally valiant attempt at demonstrating his supposed abundance of testosterone.

Thankfully Mikasa intervened before things could degenerate any further. 'Anyway, Jean, Eren's new here and I'm just showing him the ropes, so don't mind us. Hanji wants you in the kitchen because the dinner peak's going to start in about an hour's time and, um, Sasha, um, went home.' She finished her sentence, steadfastly ignoring the haunting sounds floating from the cupboard.

'Yeah, okay,' Jean said, striding into the kitchen, but not before gracing Eren with something between a sneer and a scowl which unfortunately looked comical when combined on Jean's face.

'I hate that horseface,' Eren grumbled at Mikasa the moment Jean turned his back.

Mikasa merely laughed at his affronted air. 'Goodness, Eren, don't go around picking up fights on your first day of work. Jean might look like a piece of shit at first sight but he's a good guy deep down, really. He's got a good friend named Marco-'

'Yeah, yeah,' Eren said, trying his best not to roll his eyes at Mikasa. 'Anyway, what else do I have to do now?'

'You can come with me,' came Levi's voice from the kitchen door. Eren and Mikasa turned to see Levi holding a humongous steel cage containing no less than twenty of the most menacing and disturbing looking live crabs Eren had ever laid his eyes on. 'I need someone to help me kill the crabs.'

Mikasa looked vaguely alarmed but bravely offered to go in Eren's stead. 'I could-'

'It's okay,' he cut her short. For some inexplicable reason, Eren didn't want to appear like a weenie in front of the intimidating Sous-Chef, and while it seemed like a stupid reason for him to engage in a war with twenty creatures that looked like pokemon on steroids, Eren had never been a particularly clever boy. 'I'll go.'

Levi's mouth inched up about half a millimeter into something that one might consider a smile, then he turned and walked into the kitchen without another word.


End file.
